God has shown especial favors to politicians. He has bestowed them with an art of exploiting any situation to their advantage, however difficult it may be. The latest example to this effect is Congress’s austerity campaign, which also included party’s rajputra, Rahul Gandhi’s latest journey to Ludhiana in ordinary class of Shatabdi Express. The publicity he got by spending just few hundred rupees as fare is worth more than many crores. Thanks to the media that went berserk.
Although, this is not the first time that street urchins have hurled stones on moving trains, but the hyper activity of our “great media” indicates that it was revelation for it. Perhaps, oblivious of the fact that such incidents are very common for our railways, our fourth estate has given overwhelming coverage to the incident. Now the big question is why media went overboard? Obviously, Rahul was inside the train!!!!!!!!!. Is he so important just because he is Member of Parliament or office bearer of the party????? This means all MPs and party functionaries would have been enjoying such importance? No, it’s only for Rahul “baba”, scion of Gandhi family (not Mahatma Gandhi), reigning ‘royal clan’ of a Democratic country.
The way media gone mad shows how much it has become celebrity-centered. We hardly see any news in print media, which relates to the plight of poor farmers, labourers or the other under privileged sections of our society. In electronic media height of stupidity is a common phenomenon. They can waste hours showing some cat sitting on the roof, unable to come down. These morons don’t understand that cat is much more intelligent than them. It remembers which route it took to reach there; it will come down by it on its own.
Coming back to stone-throwing incident, no doubt it is a highly deplorable and unpardonable act. Though it is punishable, but the law comes into play only when offence is committed against some important or influential person. Why the machinery keeps sleeping when same thing happens to an ordinary person? Every time you can’t bring Rahul Gandhi to wake up people who are entrusted with the job of keeping our system working safe and securely.
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14 years ago
Just read this. It appeared in The Telegraph on September 28, 2009. Do we need to say more?
ReplyDeleteGajinder
Nepotism? Mumbai fuss puzzles Haryana
SANJAY K. JHA
New Delhi, Sept. 27: The ballyhoo over the candidature of President Pratibha Patil’s son Rajendra, former Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son Amit and Union minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s daughter Praniti has left Congress leaders in Haryana bewildered.
They wonder if this is an issue at all in today’s politics.
After all, Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, whose son Deepinder is already an MP, has contrived tickets for six of his relatives.
“Karan Dalal, Sunita Singh, Krishna Jalawat, Virendra Singh, Jagbir Malik, Dharmveer…” a disgruntled ticket-seeker reeled off the names.
An aide enthusiastically added “Sampat Singh”, who is likely to become a relative of Hooda when one of his children marries into the Hooda clan in the not-too-distant future.
Some central leaders had been worried about the Congress becoming a Jat party in Haryana and wanted the ticket-distribution to balance things out and restore the party’s traditional rainbow coalition. But Hooda bulldozed his way through, extracting 30 per cent of the tickets for Jats.
What has vexed veteran Congress members is the complete dominance of Jat leaders who were once lieutenants of the late Devi Lal, a man who epitomised anti-Congressism in north India.
Leaders such as Sampat Singh, Jai Prakash, Kailasho Devi Saini, Harminder Singh Chattha, Captain Ajay Singh Yadav, Sushil Kumar Indora, Raghbir Singh Kadyan, Anand Singh Dange, Prof Virender, Srikrishna Hooda, Ramesh Kaushik, Mahendra Pratap and Karan Dalal, who are now on the Congress candidates list, were all Devi Lal’s men.
Devi Lal’s son Ranjit Singh too has been given a Congress ticket. Sources say that at least 45 of the total 90 seats have gone to outsiders or turncoats.
The majority view in the party had been that the leadership should learn from the Andhra Pradesh experience (following the YSR tragedy) and not put all its eggs in one basket. This lobby also disapproved of Hooda’s move to turn the Congress into a Jat party and the unprecedented projection of his own personality in the run-up to the elections.
But the critics now agree that in Haryana, the Congress is completely Hooda-centric and there is no alternative force that can confront his might.
Hooda has been able to risk antagonising other Congress leaders and build a team of his own loyalists primarily because the disjointed Opposition has allowed him to throw caution to the winds.
The recent Lok Sabha elections proved that no real alternative to Hooda has yet taken shape in Haryana. Also, issues like dynasty and nepotism do not agitate the voter’s mind because every party is guilty of this practice.
The main Opposition, the Indian National Lok Dal run by Devi Lal’s son Om Prakash Chautala, is a known family fief. Chautala’s son Ajay has almost taken over the reins of the party.
The other major force is represented by Bhajan Lal, whose son Kuldeep Bishnoi runs his party. Bhajan’s wife too is contesting this election. Bhajan’s elder son Chander Mohan alias Chand Mohammad, a former minister, would have contested on a Congress ticket but for the scandal over his affair and second marriage to Fiza.